


Halfway to Your Heart

by sweeterthankarma



Category: The Carrie Diaries
Genre: Canon-typical Underage Drinking, F/F, S2E12: This Is The Time, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 14:30:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16996788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweeterthankarma/pseuds/sweeterthankarma
Summary: Mouse’s admission hums in the form of a heartbeat battering against her ribs, fierce and honest and speaking a truth she wishes she could deny.Liking a girl isn’t something she ever expected for herself, although she was never opposed to it. Liking Donna LaDonna is something else entirely.





	Halfway to Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "Given It All" by none other than our lesbian Jesus, Hayley Kiyoko.

Donna is like a fairy princess and Mouse can’t take her eyes off her.

She’s never been the biggest fan of hot pink, especially when it’s as exaggerated and almost blinding as it is on Donna’s current fluffy, flamboyant, trailing gown, but she’s mesmerized like a kid in a candy shop, like a dog seeing first snowfall, like Carrie in Manhattan— every analogy she can come up with is cheesy and cliche and completely fitting. Donna is a  _ dream.  _

Mouse never bedazzled her sweaters or headbands growing up, but Donna shimmers before her like a walking diamond and Mouse suddenly understands the almost cult like appeal that every teenage girl besides Dorritt seemed to experience towards rhinestones. Mouse has never loved extravagant hairstyles either, but Donna’s tall, voluptuous bun makes Mouse think of Princess Leia, if Princess Leia wore magenta heels that could likely stab through glass and break someone’s hand in one motion.

Mouse thinks momentarily that Donna could make a trash bag look good, and then she’s envisioning that, and then Donna says something and she’s snapping herself out of her trance, pretending her distracted haze is mere musing on the fact that they’re about to walk into their senior prom.

Donna knows Mouse is sentimental over the big days. What she has no idea about is the fact that she’s overwhelmingly sentimental about her, as well.

Growing up, Mouse had never dreamt of a fairytale kind of love, of being a princess rescued by a prince. Now, she realizes she’d much rather rescue the princess herself. 

  
  


Mouse couldn’t care less about what anybody else is wearing. She tells Maggie and Carrie and a girl from her calculus class that they look beautiful and it’s not a lie, but she isn’t seeing them the same way. 

She doesn’t see anyone else the same way.

She’s been trying to convince herself that maybe she just likes Donna as a friend. She’s just surprised that they get along, that she isn’t the bossy queen bee that everyone— including herself— has always received her to be. Plus, she’s smart, and Mouse is still reeling over that information. 

(They slept together, too. Well, spooned. Physical contact and comfort is very important and necessary, especially in adolescent years, so maybe it’s just hormones.)

But Mouse can’t stop staring at Donna’s lips, even when they’re bare of her usual bright lip gloss and not even moving, and she knows that’s a different kid of hormone. She feels the nerves in her stomach, the same feeling she always used to feel when she was around Seth or West, and it’s undeniable.  _ Butterflies.  _

She’s realizing the truth tonight. She’s had a creeping suspicion these past few months, but now, she can’t lie to herself. She won’t. Her feelings are....well, they’re there. They’re something. 

  
  


Later on, her stomach hurts again, but this time it’s for a different reason. 

Donna and Pendleton kiss on stage, in front of everyone, and the truth of the matter ricochets through her mind so hard she almost has to sit down. The crowd cheers loud around her and the noise echoes in her ears. 

Donna is straight. 

Even if Donna wasn’t straight, she probably doesn’t and wouldn’t ever like her like that. 

Even if Donna wasn’t straight  _ and  _ she did like Mouse like that, she’d never want them to be open and public about their relationship. Regardless of the fact that in two weeks, she’ll waltz across the stage, flip her hair, accept her diploma and walk out of Castlebury High for the last time, Donna’s reputation precedes her and Mouse knows she wants it to stay solidified as the ever perfect golden girl who never has a single hair out of place. 

After all, that’s why she went to prom with Pendleton in the first place and wanted her acceptance to Columbia to be a secret. (Mouse could never be with someone who didn’t take pride in their academic abilities. Right.  _ Right?) _

Mouse’s admission hums in the form of a heartbeat battering against her ribs, fierce and honest and speaking a truth she wishes she could deny. 

Liking a girl isn’t something she ever expected for herself, although she was never opposed to it. Liking  _ Donna LaDonna  _ is something else entirely. 

Donna wraps her arms tight around Pendleton’s neck and Mouse looks anywhere else but at the scene before her. 

  
  


Later on, they find the photo booth and they all crowd in together: her, Donna, Walt, Bennet, and Maggie, pushed up against flimsy cardboard walls and cloth curtains that smell of cigarettes and beer. They’re all tipsy by now so they don’t care— Dorritt did a fair job on the punch, none of them can deny that— and besides, it feels right, at least for the moment. They’re all closer to each other than usual, arms haphazardly intertwined, and they laugh loud because of it, unprepared for the automated flashes that just keep coming and coming no matter how many times they yell, “no, I’m not ready!”

If you had told Mouse a year ago that she’d be spending prom with Donna and enjoying it, she would have called you crazy. But Mouse has seen Donna in a different light. 

And she looks divine in this light right now, too.

She’s getting caught up— her stomach hurts from laughing, she can barely catch her breath, and then Donna’s lips are brushing her cheek for the next photo, faux kissing, of course, and now she really can’t breathe. 

Their lips aren’t even close, it’s not like they’re pretending to actually, really kiss— mouth to mouth, that is— and Mouse is suddenly irritated, she just doesn’t know why Donna can’t at least actually touch her cheek right now. (Maybe it’d ruin her lipgloss.)

Anyways, Mouse grins so fiercely her jaw hurts. It’s fake, of course, it’s the fakest smile she’s ever put on, and she swallows hard as the flash blinds her eyelids. She closes them for the next picture, and then the one after that, and Donna’s hand is on her back, ushering her forward with a touch that’s feather light and makes her shiver, and she walks fast, distancing herself from Donna’s touch as much as she can without being too obvious. 

They’re going to drink more punch now, to get even drunker and laugh about the Jen’s failed little stunt to ruin Donna’s repute— “so what if I’m smart, I’m still the prettiest person to ever adjust my makeup in those busted bathroom mirrors,” Donna yells loudly, drunkenly, and Mouse shushes her only because the chaperone in the corner has been eyeing them for awhile now.

It’s a true statement though, Mouse thinks. 

  
  


Later, they stand outside waiting for their rides and barely shiver in the cold. The alcohol and adrenaline in their bloodstream makes them immune, or at least it seems like it. They lean against the wall, standing close for no reason at all, and they all laugh as Maggie is still marveling at the fact that Donna does indeed have more than a couple brain cells. Mouse watches, a bit too closely, the way that Donna’s hand comes firmly up to Maggie’s lips when she mentions Columbia again, and she knows it means nothing so she doesn’t know why betrayal stings in the back of her chest. 

(Her and Donna are nothing but friends, after all. They’re barely even that.)

A member of the hotel staff walks by with a used refreshment cart, and Donna lunges for the last cup on the table, still filled to the brim with spiked fruit punch. She takes a sip and drags it out, making the moment oddly sentimental and then smiling once she’s swallowed, and then she passes the cup around. 

    “It’s been a good night,” she says, and it sounds like both a greeting and a goodbye. 

While Maggie and Walt drink from the other side of the brim, Mouse pretends not to notice where her lips are going and directly tastes Donna’s lip gloss. 

She looks up at Donna, half afraid and half hoping she’ll notice and comment on it, but her back is turned. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really hope that the writers for The Carrie Diaries were planning to do something with Mouse and Donna if we had gotten more than two seasons. I mean, come on— after the spooning scene, how could something not come from that?  
> Anyways, you can find me on Tumblr @sweeterthankarma, where I'm always obsessing over sapphic ships, canon or not.


End file.
